


Her Five Senses (The Conservatory Remix)

by La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)



Category: Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 04:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4465796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know," she said, "I have no fortune."</p><p>"You don't need one," he told her. "We'll make it together, you and I."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Five Senses (The Conservatory Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newredshoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Untitled Steampunk Drabble](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/133250) by newredshoes. 



> Many thanks to likeadeuce and speakmefair for beta-reading! Title comes from the following quotation by Edwin Hubble: "Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science."

_Let me take you home_.

 

She'd been avoiding the conversation for months now. Kate _was_ home; the great, filthy city thrummed through her veins like lifeblood. But it had never been that way for Harry. She knew that. He was a country boy at heart, and no amount of love, nothing he felt for her, could change that.

 

He couldn't hide the instinctive grimace at the stench of engine grease, the wince as he looked up at the sky perpetually greyed with smoke from factories and streetcars. The airships, he and Kate alike viewed with childish delight, but while Kate was willing to excuse the filth and grime in the name of progress, Harry clung stubbornly to a dream of green paradise.

 

Nor would she change it for all the world. It was what made Harry Hotspur who he was--a brash, loud-mouthed, too-bold northman meant for the wide expanses from which he came. He was too big for London's winding streets, its alleyways and tight corners barely lit by newfangled electrical lamps.  It was why they worked so perfectly together.

 

They'd first met in the conservatory outside Henry Bolingbroke's massive house near Regent's Park--a surprisingly respectable location given everything Kate knew about him--where Kate had retreated to avoid the attentions of Bolingbroke's eldest son. He'd already had too much to drink and when Hal was drunk, mayhem inevitably followed. The last time, he'd almost managed to steal an airship docked in the park before the constables dragged him back to his father, red-faced but wholly unrepentant.

 

The worst was when Hal had an audience, which he did this time. Not just Kate's elder brother Edmund--useless on the best of days--but this new fellow who called himself Harry Hotspur and managed to lodge his foot firmly in his mouth within five minutes of his arrival when he bent over her hand in greeting and announced that she was far better looking now than she had been the last time he saw her.

 

Kate's interests had always been firmly biological. To her parents' dismay, she preferred the halls of the Natural History Museum to the couturiers of Regent Street and spent winter afternoons with her nose in bioengineering treatises rather than the gossip sheets. She only found the Season interesting insomuch as it allowed her to observe London society's mating habits at close range and laugh about it in her own time.

 

Thus, she fixed Harry with a look cold as Yorkshire ice. "I'm afraid I don't remember you at all."

 

A bold-faced lie, but his face crumpled like a child's and she couldn't help the small stab of guilt. "But we talked for nearly two hours," he muttered. "You were _interesting_."

 

"I still am," Kate informed him. "And I'll be in the conservatory, far away from all these... _people_." It wasn't the word she wanted to use, but she was supposed to be behaving herself. Whatever else one could say about Henry Bolingbroke, he had a remarkable collection of exotic plants.

 

The previous owner of this conservatory, Kate's cousin several times removed, had been obsessed with bioengineered fauna--butterflies wrought of gold, orchids composed of both gears and chloroplasts. She'd loved it beyond measure as a child, but all those things were gone now. She had nothing against pure botany--after all, a plant was a remarkable machine in its own way--but it was too silent now in the conservatory without the undercurrent of whirring motors and turning gears.

 

She didn't want to admit it, but she had to bite back a smile when she heard the conservatory door open. "Suppose I should have got you flowers," said Harry. "But it seemed like the sort of thing you'd laugh at."

 

"Not all flowers are created equal," said Kate, turning to face him. "If you'd brought me roses or lilies, I'd have laughed at you."

 

"I'm not _that_ stupid," Harry replied with a grimace. "What's your favourite?"

 

She told him.

 

The following night, just before bed, a bicycle messenger knocked at the Mortimers' door with a parcel for Kate. When she opened it in her bedroom, she found herself looking down at a single perfect tiger lily wrought of gold and topaz, sprouting from a small terracotta pot, its stem as green as any flower of the meadow. She knew it instantly--after all, she'd visited it once a week for nearly ten years now, a marvel of perfect bioengineering, or so the museum hailed it. There was no note but she knew without a doubt who had sent it.

 

She next saw him outside the Natural History Museum and took his arm before he could greet her. "Are you sure you ought to be here?"

 

"Nobody saw me," he told her, grinning widely. "You'd be surprised how easy it is to distract museum guards."

 

"Tell me how you did it."

 

She wasn't sure how much of the tale she believed--crossed radio wires, a streetcar rigged with an exact timer that nearly careened into the museum's door, and Harry Percy creeping silent as a cat through the corridors toward his prize while all the museum's staff were otherwise occupied with the near-accident--but she couldn't help the smile it brought to her face.

 

"You know," she said, "I have no fortune."

 

"You don't need one," he told her. "We'll make it together, you and I."

 

And so they had. And now he wanted her to go _home_ with him. To Alnwick, to a place so far removed from everything Kate knew that it might as well be in China. Truth be told, she might rather go to China. She'd heard all manner of fascinating stories.

 

"What would we do there, Harry?" she asked him after they returned to their rented rooms near Covent Garden, small and cramped and perfect for them. "And why so suddenly?"

 

"Bolingbroke's decided I'm expendable," he explained, mouth twisting angrily. "And your brother has made me a better offer. But I need to go home first, to speak to my father, and I want you to come with me. You've never been there. You could see where I grew up, Kate."

 

She had wondered about him as a child. No doubt he'd spent all his time out on the moors, muddy to the knees, chasing lapwings and sheep untouched by scientists or engineers. There _were_ laboratories in Lancashire and even, she'd heard, in northern Wales, but they guarded their secrets jealously, ever suspicious of the Royal Society and its members. Edmund had been trying for years now to arrange a visit to the reclusive Owen Glendower to no avail.

 

What her brother planned, Kate didn't know, and some part of her didn't want to know. Edmund's plans were notoriously bad. But perhaps if she agreed to Harry's offer, he might forget about Edmund altogether. She could think of worse ways to spend her days than cultivating new and fantastical plants in a conservatory in Northumberland.

 

"Very well, Harry. Let's go home."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Her Five Senses (The Conservatory Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10023866) by [derivational (crookedspoon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/derivational)




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